Wednesday, May 26, 2010

BILOXI BLUES -- Jelly Roll Morton and Main Street

The city of Biloxi joins the Mississippi Blues Trail on May 27, 2010, with the dedication of a “Biloxi Blues” marker on Main Street. Researching the history of blues, R&B, and jazz in towns like Biloxi has been the most eye-opening experience I’ve had while working with the Mississippi Blues Trail. Blues fans are familiar with the blues lore of Clarksdale, Indianola, Greenville, Greenwood, Jackson, and other towns in the Delta and central Mississippi, but blues scenes usually developed wherever there was African American community, and there have been more of those in Mississippi than anywhere else. The Mississippi-Alabama Gulf Coast scene is of special interest to me since I lived most of my pre-college years in Biloxi and Mobile and often visited relatives in Hattiesburg and Gulfport, unaware of the music that lay just “across the tracks.” There is much more history to investigate, but, for now, better late than never, here is a little bit of the Biloxi Blues story. This is an expanded version of the text that appears on the Mississippi Blues Trail marker.




BILOXI BLUES

The Mississippi Coast, long a destination for pleasure seekers, tourists, and gamblers, as well as maritime workers and armed services personnel, developed a flourishing nightlife during the segregation era. While most venues were reserved for whites, the small stretch of Main Street between the L&N Railroad and the Division Street intersection in Biloxi was one of several districts that catered to the African American trade. Especially during the boom years during and after World War II, dozens of clubs and cafes here rocked to the sounds of blues, jazz, and rhythm & blues.

Biloxi was strutting to the rhythms of cakewalk dances, vaudeville and minstrel show music, dance orchestras, and ragtime pianists by the late 1800s, before blues and jazz had fully emerged. Situated along the Gulf Coast performing circuit between the Florida panhandle and Houston, Biloxi was a stopping point for traveling bands and musical revues, and music here was particularly influenced by and intertwined with that of New Orleans. Crescent City jazz pioneers Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941) and Bill Johnson (c. 1874-1972) lived in Biloxi in the early 1900s before moving on to California, Chicago, and other distant locales. Morton's seminal recordings, compositions, and recollections form much of the basis of what we know about the early days of jazz and blues; he in fact promoted himself as the “Originator of Jazz.”

Morton’s name at birth in New Orleans was Ferdinand Lamothe. He sometimes stayed on a Biloxi strawberry farm owned by his godmother, Laura Hunter, who was reputed to be a voodoo practitioner in New Orleans, where she went by the name of Eulalie Hecaud. In Biloxi, c. 1907-08, Morton recalled, “I used to often frequent the Flat Top, which was nothin’ but a old honky tonk, where nothin’ but the blues were played. There was fellas around played the blues like Brocky Johnny, Skinny Head Pete . . . Old Florida Sam and Tricky Sam, and that bunch. Why, they just played just ordinary blues — the real lowdown blues, honky tonk blues.”

At the Flat Top, in the old Biloxi Electric Light Company building at Reynoir Street north of the railroad tracks, Morton used his skills as a pianist, pool player, and card shark to hustle customers, particularly workers who flocked to town from the turpentine camps in the woods north of town. Morton and other local African American musicians were also often hired for white social affairs and dances, and he played at the posh Great Southern Hotel in Gulfport (where a golf course built in 1908 earned it the title “home of golf in Mississippi”) and at parties for seafood magnate and theater owner W. K. M. Dukate. As he told Alan Lomax:

“Why I happened to be in this little bitty city of Biloxi, which was quite a prosperous little city — at the time — because it was a great summer resort. Had a lot of millionaires, they used to make kind of a headquarters during the winter season because the weather was fine. Fine oysters and fishing and so forth and so on. And golf and different things. Many times I have played for a lot of big parties and so forth, for the Dukates, the oysters and shrimp owners, and so forth and so on.”

Morton courted a Biloxi woman, Bessie Johnson, whose family lived on Delauney Street and later on Croesus Street, both just a few streets west of Main Street. At least three of her brothers, Bill, Robert, and Ollie (“Dink”), were musicians; Bill Johnson’s famous touring unit, the Creole Band (also known by various names including the Original Creole Orchestra and the New Orleans Creole Ragtime Band), introduced New Orleans’ ragtime, jazz, and blues to audiences all across the country. Bessie, who adopted the show business moniker of Anita Gonzales, was commonly known Morton’s wife, although they may have never legally married. Other early Biloxi musicians of note included brothers Romie and Lamar “Buck” Nelson, both acclaimed minstrel show performers; drummer Jimmy Bertrand, who played on many classic blues and jazz recording sessions in Chicago, and his uncle, Alphonse Farzan (or Ferzand); and William Tuncel’s Big Four String Band.

Biloxi prospered during World War II as the population surged with incoming workers to fill the new job market, joined by thousands of airmen stationed at Keesler Field. By 1943, seven thousand black troops were stationed at Keesler – about three times the town of Biloxi’s black population at the time. The Keesler airmen participated in the Biloxi scene both as audience members and musicians; Paul Gayten, a noted blues and R&B recording artist and producer in New Orleans and California, directed the black USO band during World War II, and singer-pianist Billy “The Kid” Emerson, who recorded for the legendary Sun label in Memphis, served at Keesler Air Force Base in the 1950s. In fact, both Gayten and Emerson got married in Biloxi. Main Street developed a concentration of entertainment venues that featured traveling national acts, New Orleans performers, and local bands, as well as jukeboxes and slot machines. African American MPs from Keesler patrolled the district to keep the peace. Among the many clubs on the street were the Little Apple, the Big Apple (later the Shalamar, among several other names), Paradise Garden, Club Delisa, Club Desire, Beck's Deck and Beck's Nest, the Blue Note, the Odd Fellows (G.U.O. of O.F.) Lodge, the Cocoanut Grove, and Jackson’s Casino; on nearby streets were the Rum Boogie and the “Black Elks” (I.B.P.O.E.W.) lodge. Blues/R&B producer-songwriter Sax Kari later operated a record store, Sax Music Service, at 726 Main Street, and rock ‘n’ roll star Bo Diddley’s brother, Rev. Kenneth Haynes, came to Biloxi to pastor at the Main Street Baptist Church (soul singer Lattimore Brown was a recent member of his congregation). Local musicians active in Biloxi clubs in later years include Charles Fairley, Cozy Corley, Skin Williams, and bands such as the Kings of Soul, Sounds of Soul, and Carl Gates and the Decks. While other performing venues, white and black, along the coast opened up to the sounds of rhythm & blues, Main Street’s once-vibrant business and social community began to fade out. By the 1980s only a few nightspots were still open (including the Little Apple, which stayed in business for more than forty years, the Blue Note, and Sachmo’s Lounge), and they too finally closed. Hurricanes and periodic civic campaigns to clean up illegal activities took their toll over the years, too. Local entertainment perked up again in the 1990s as legalized casinos and the Gulf Coast Blues and Heritage Festival brought a new wave of blues and southern soul stars to Biloxi.

The Mississippi Blues Trail is still seeking more historical information and photographs related to music on the Gulf Coast, and anyone who has material is invited to contact research director Jim O’Neal at bluesoterica@aol.com or 816-931-0383. Future blues trail markers on the coast are planned for North Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, and Moss Point.


Research assistance and sources: Rip Daniels; Jamie Bounds, Biloxi Public Library; Lynn Abbott, Hogan Archive of New Orleans Jazz (Ragged But Right); Renee Hague and Sherry Owens, Pascagoula Public Library; Mark Coltrain, John D. Williams Library, University of Mississippi; Brenda Haskins; Lawrence Gushee (Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band); www.doctorjazz.co.uk; Charles Fairley; Johnny Rawls; Cozy Corley; Odile Gayten; Billy Emerson; Sherry Bishop; Preston Lauterbach; Allan Hammons, Hammons & Associates; Biloxi city directories and census records; Biloxi Daily Herald articles; Alan Lomax’s Library of Congress interviews with Jelly Roll Morton.




-- JIM O’NEAL

In tribute to the Biloxi oyster trade, here is the label of Jelly Roll Morton's Vocalion recording, "The Pearls," courtesy Chuck Haddix, UMKC Marr Sound Archives:

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

TALLYHO SURE IS GOOD (and so is PEP-TI-KON) . . . and HADACOL

[See previous posting, TALLYHO! $100 MISSISSIPPI BLUES TRAIL REWARD (Belzoni) for information on the blues trail marker being dedicated at the site of the old Turner’s Drug Store in Belzoni, Mississippi, in honor of the 1940s Sonny Boy Williamson broadcasts sponsored by Tallyho (or Talaho), a tonic marketed by Turner’s and the Easy Pay Store.]

TALLYHO SURE IS GOOD

Thanks to Mother Teretha Lee of Midnight, Mississippi, we have words to the Tallyho theme song as she remembered Sonny Boy Williamson singing it on the radio:

Tallyho, it sure is good, you can buy it anywhere in the neighborhood.
Go on the corner of Hayden Street, Mr. Turner Drug Store.
You ask to buy one, buy two. It’s good for you, it’s good for the children too.
Tallyho, it sure is good.
Take it in the morning, take it at night, Tallyho’ll make you feel just right.

A very similar jingle was used by B.B. King on WDIA in Memphis for another tonic called Pep-Ti-Kon:

Pep-Ti-Kon sure is good, Pep-Ti-Kon sure is good, Pep-Ti-Kon sure is good.
You can get it anywhere in your neighborhood.

B.B. has always said that he came up with the jingle on the spot at the request of WDIA (whose owners, John R. Pepper and Bert Ferguson, owned the company that made Pep-Ti-Kon). We don’t have precise dates of when the Tally-Ho and Pep-Ti-Kon songs were first sung on the radio, but the Tallyho show apparently did predate B.B.’s debut on WDIA, which came in late 1948 or early 1949. Turner’s books showed expenses for radio advertising in 1947 and 1948 on Yazoo City station WAZF and also on a Greenville station, according to the account Gayle Dean Wardlow reported from Turner’s pharmacist W.G. Bush in 1971.

B.B. may or may not have heard the Tallyho song – we’re trying to get the question to him – but he has recalled appearing on a Sonny Boy Williamson program on KWEM in West Memphis, prior to his WDIA stint. Sonny Boy’s KWEM sponsor was none other than Hadacol, and perhaps Sonny Boy had just revamped the Tallyho song into a Hadacol jingle.

(A number of blues and country songs were recorded about Hadacol, but we haven’t heard any that use the “sure is good” line from the Tallyho/Pep-Ti-Kon themes.)

The Hadacol story in itself is a fascinating and well-documented one. Louisiana Senator Dudley J. LeBlanc turned Hadacol into a multi-million dollar enterprise, complete with a traveling variety show which at times featured such major celebrities as Mickey Rooney, George Burns, and Hank Williams. The Hadacol empire, constantly challenged by the medical profession and the U.S. government, had a sensational run but finally collapsed in 1951. (For more, see the “Medicine Show Impresario” chapter of James Harvey Young’s book The Medical Messiahs: A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America.)

An episode of the Hadacol saga not documented until now, however, was its connection to Tallyho. Hollywood producer Larry Gordon, son of Easy Pay owner George Gordon, and O.J. Turner III, who mixed Tallyho in washtubs in the back of his father’s drug store, provided these details: George Gordon met Dudley LeBlanc when both were patients at the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, and from that meeting, Gordon was inspired to market his own tonic, under a formula licensed from LeBlanc. Turner’s mixed and bottled Tallyho, while Gordon provided the marketing expertise as well as a space in his store where Sonny Boy would set up and perform. Larry Gordon still remembers the novelty of LeBlanc coming to the Gordon home in Belzoni driven by a chauffeur. At times LeBlanc produced other brands of patent medicines, including Happy Day, Dixie Dew, and Kary-On; we haven’t figured out who came up with the name Tallyho but it’s worth noting that Hadacol first took hold among the cajun population of LeBlanc’s area of Louisiana, including the community of Bayou Goula – home to a well-known plantation called Tally-Ho. Everyone we’ve talked to has pronounced the name “Tallyho,” including Gayle Dean Wardlow, who conveyed the spelling as Talaho; O.J. Jr.'s son Jack, who threw away the last box of labels after he took over the drug store, insists that it was spelled Tallyho, unhyphenated. We had hoped to find some advertisements for the tonic in Delta newspapers of the era to check the spelling, but we haven’t seen any ads for it – the publicity may have been limited to local radio, and in view of the way Hadacol was being monitored by authorities, Tallyho may have been kept a bit under the official radar. Sales of Tallyho were starting to spread, but interstate commerce could have led to federal charges, and that may have been the reason production was shut down after a few years, according to the Turners.

We don’t know whether Pep-Ti-Kon had a direct connection to LeBlanc and Hadacol, or whether it was just another of the many local elixirs that sprang up in the wake of Hadacol’s success (including a concoction called Retonga marketed by another Belzoni drug store). But the owners of Pep-Ti-Kon and WDIA were John R. Pepper and Bert Ferguson, who had earlier been principals at Greenville’s first station, WJPR, which may have later been the Greenville outlet for the Tally-Ho show. WJPR’s first competitor in Greenville, WGVM, did not begin operations until December of 1948, but it aired a number of blues programs in its early years. And WGVM was started by David Segal, who had previously managed WROX in Clarksdale. WROX served as a secondary base in the mid/late 1940s for Sonny Boy Williamson’s “King Biscuit Time” broadcasts, which usually originated from KFFA in Helena.

So somehow, primarily through Sonny Boy, many of these threads are connected. If anyone can help unravel more of these mysteries, please let us know!

Special thanks to Doug and Leslie Turner and to Helen Sims of the Mississippi Delta Blues Society in Belzoni for their assistance and for all the work they have put into this marker project.


Thanks also to the Gordons and Turners for all the information they have contributed, to the librarians in Belzoni who let us peruse the crumbling issues of the Banner newspaper, and to Brenda Haskins who has used so many of her vacation days to go through old newspapers, microfilm, and city directories with me.

POSTSCRIPT: The Mississippi Blues Trail marker at Turner's Drug Store was dedicated on May 22, 2010. No one has turned up a Tallyho bottle yet -- we're still offering $100 for a bottle or label!

Jim O’Neal
bluesoterica@aol.com

TALLY-HO! $100 MISSISSIPPI BLUES TRAIL REWARD! (Belzoni)

The following article appeared in the May 5, 2010, edition of the Belzoni Banner. Some revisions have been made for this blog. I have also since been told by O.J. Turner Jr.'s son Jack that Tallyho, unhyphenated, is the correct spelling: he remembers throwing away the last box of labels after he took over his father's drug store. (See next post for more details on the Tallyho story.)


TALLY-HO! $100 BLUES TRAIL REWARD!

By Jim O’Neal
Research Director
Mississippi Blues Trail

Tally-Ho, a tonic once produced at Turner’s Drug Store, sold for a few dollars a bottle in the 1940s. Now, anyone who has an old bottle of it, or even the label from a bottle, is being offered a $100 prize in a contest sponsored by the Mississippi Blues Trail.

Why? Because Tally-Ho was the sponsor of a historic radio program featuring legendary blues singer and harmonica player Sonny Boy Williamson, who lived in Belzoni at the time. Sometimes Williamson was joined by Belzoni guitarist Elmore James. Both men were elected to the Blues Hall of Fame on the first ballot ever circulated by the Memphis-based Blues Foundation. And the Mississippi Blues Trail is placing a historical marker at the old Turner’s Drug Store site on Hayden Street on May 15 in honor of the broadcasts, which boosted Williamson and James on their way to stardom before either man had started his recording career. Williamson later recorded such hits as “Eyesight to the Blind,” “Help Me,” and “Don’t Start Me Talking,” while James was known for “Dust My Broom,” “It Hurts Me Too,” and “The Sky Is Crying.”

In the 1940s and ‘50s, blues and country & western bands often played live on local radio stations across the South, advertising tonics, flour brands, and furniture stores. In 1948 WAZF in Yazoo City laid a direct telephone line to Belzoni and had a remote broadcasting studio built under the guidance of station engineer Don Flinspach and Belzoni merchant W.C. Warren of Delta Electric Co. Several hours of WAZF’s daily programming emanated from Belzoni, where local musician Bob Novak was hired as announcer. Sonny Boy Williamson came at 3:30 p.m., broadcasting live from the Easy Pay Store, singing blues and sometimes gospel songs, as well as a Tally-Ho theme song which began. “Tally-Ho sure is good, you can buy it anywhere in your neighborhood.” The Easy Pay also advertised its merchandise on the radio. Easy Pay owner George Gordon and O.J. Turner, Jr., of Turner’s were partners in the Tally-Ho venture, which was modeled after a popular tonic called Hadacol. Both tonics did a booming business at one time, and although they were advertised as vitamin supplements, the alcohol content of both offered consumers an extra “kick.” Older residents recall that Tally-Ho was popular both among whites and African Americans.

Parts of the Tally-Ho story have appeared in various blues history books, based on an interview that blues researcher Gayle Dean Wardlow conducted with Turner’s pharmacist W.G. Bush in the early 1970s. The tonic is usually spelled “Talaho” in these accounts. The Mississippi Blues Trail hopes to find an actual bottle to confirm the correct spelling. Other questions also remain, including the site of the radio studio that was constructed in Belzoni, and the call letters of the Greenville station that also broadcast from Belzoni. Some sources report that it was WGVM, while others cite WJPR. Anyone with a Tally-Ho bottle or label or information on the radio studio and stations, Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James, or other Belzoni blues musicians, including Robert Earl Holston and Boyd Gilmore, is invited to contact Helen Sims in Belzoni at 836-7761 or the Mississippi Blues Trail research department at (816) 931-0383, e-mail bluesoterica@aol.com. The blues trail is also looking for original photographs.

The marker at Turner’s will be the blues trail’s third in Belzoni. Pinetop Perkins and Denise LaSalle are featured on the first two. In addition to Sonny Boy Williamson, Elmore James, Turner’s, and Easy Pay, the new marker will also honor Belzoni educator Lonnie Haynes for his work in the 1950s as a blues drummer with James and Little Milton.

In addition, a 1939 photograph of a guitarist playing in front of Turner’s will be printed on the marker. (Hopefully someone in attendance can identify this unnamed musician.) In the future the blues trail hopes to honor some of Belzoni’s important venues for blues, including Jack Anderson’s cab stand, Jake’s Place, and the IBPOEW Elks Club.

The Mississippi Delta Blues Society, Mississippi Blues Trail, and the Turner family are sponsoring a full slate of events on May 15, including:

2:00 p.m.: Pinetop Perkins marker relocation dedication, 17150 Hwy. 49W, with music by band members who played with the late Belzoni bluesman Paul “Wine” Jones, plus Bill Abel and a blues jam with Old School Steve, W.H. Lowe, and the Willie Archer Blues Band.

4:00 p.m to 6:00 p.m.: DJ Frank spinning the blues at Hayden & Jackson in downtown Belzoni.

6:00 p.m.: Turner’s Drug Store marker dedication with music by Bentonia bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes.

7:00 to 10:00 p.m. Benefit for the Mississippi Delta Blues Society hosted by Restaurant 107, Long’s Deli, and the O.J. Turner, Jr. family, with music by Jimmy “Duck” Holmes with Stan Street & the Hambone Band, at Restaurant 107 (107 East Jackson Street).

R.S.V.P. 615-473-5436 or lestea@mindspring.com.

[See next posting for more details on the Tally-Ho/Talaho saga.]